


Death-Defying

by theLiterator



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Damian Wayne is an Assassin, Dick Grayson is a Talon, Gen, Hurt, League of Assassins - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 23:25:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9146635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: Bruce Wayne never had a Robin, and now he's dead.Talons and al Ghuls, however, never die.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skalidra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skalidra/gifts).



> This was written for the DickDami Secret Santa exchange on Imzy, for Skalidra. Her prompt was "Weapons" and I couldn't resist writing the boys in an alternate universe where they both _are_ weapons. It was a little shorter than I had planned, but it turns out it's REALLY FREAKING HARD to write secret fic you can't tell one of your best friends about.
> 
> So thank you for being my BFF, and I hope you a) are surprised and b) enjoy your fic. <3

The chamber his grandfather used as a throne room was dimly lit. Candles guttered in the chandelier, throwing the whole of the room into shadowy relief, letting the mosaics of triumphs that pre-dated even his grandfather’s possession of the fortress fade into the background of the room, while still allowing the throne his grandfather sat upon to gleam with ebony and emerald splendor.

Damian stood at his right side, as he had since his mother’s death, and he kept his face impassive as he listened to the reports of his grandfather’s agents.

There was a growing restlessness in Ra’s al Ghul, and Damian did not like it-- he remained safe and sane because of his grandfather’s complacency, because whatever rash need for spilling filial blood had come over him had been slaked by Talia’s and Dusan’s deaths years before.

Damian knew that any change in his grandfather’s moods could be his own demise, and that knowledge did not sit easy with him, who was trained from the moment of his decanting to _survive_ , to fight against all who would tear him down no matter what.

The only thing that kept him there, at his grandfather’s side, docile in a flickering throne room, was the counter drive that had been instilled in him nearly as long: _obey_.

He shifted, slightly, and Ra’s’s bodyguard shifted as well, a breath behind him, her whole body tense to mirror his own tension, and he slanted a glance over his shoulder at her, smiling a reassuring smile with the bare edges of his mouth. When he felt her relax again, he allowed the expression to smooth back into the practiced placidity of a trained killer.

A group of assassins entered the room, shoving a bound prisoner ahead of them and forcing him, snarling, to his knees in front of the throne, and Damian took a step forward and to the left, shielding his grandfather with his own body, as protocol demanded.

“My lord Ra’s,” one of the men said, bowing at the waist and holding his hands out to show that he held no weapons.

Damian dropped his hand to the hilt of the dao at his waist and stared not at the assassin but at the prisoner.

“As you had ordered, the Court of Owls had been dismantled; the death of your rival had been avenged,” the man continued, and Ra’s resettled in his throne.

“I told you to _eradicate_ them,” Ra’s said, his voice only barely louder than a whisper, and the man blinked, betraying his fear. Damian pitied him.

“I thought that this… _curiosity_ would intrigue you, my lord,” the man replied, swallowing hard before continuing: “It does not die.”

Damian shifts his focus back to the prisoner, watched the way he kneels, utterly impassive, not fighting his bonds, not reacting to the discussion at all, and he crossed the floor to them before Ra’s even signalled him to investigate.

The man was scarred, purpling lines looking half-healed seaming the skin of his face, his throat, his wrists, and then older scars, just as ugly, hidden under those, barely visible in the flickering candlelight from the chandelier.

Damian circled him, and while within the man’s view, his eyes follow the movement, but he did not turn to follow Damian the way he would have expected from one of their men. There was wariness in his posture, but he was resigned to his surroundings in ways no League-trained man ever would be.

He smelled like cold metal and old blood, and his hair was long and matted, his skin dirty with flaking blood and other filth.

Damian reached out, tracing his fingers along one scar, and it radiated feverish heat beneath his fingers. He wanted to shudder and draw back, but he didn’t.

“Interesting,” Damian allowed. “Some of these were fatal, and it was not the Pit that healed him, Grandfather.”

Ra’s watched him, and Damian drew a knife, which got a reaction: the man turned feral, lunging for Damian and bringing his chained wrists up in an effort to get them over Damian’s head, to use as a garrotte. Clever, but ultimately futile, Damian thought, sidestepping the attack and stabbing the man through the heart with a single, deft motion. 

The man did not stop.

Damian took a step back, and the followed, not stopping until Damian’s katana was buried to the hilt just beneath his sternum, and even then, Damian thought, he would continue to fight, except something that flickered in his eyes and he just… ceased, all the energy of the sudden fight gone.

“Does he live, Damian?” Ra’s asked, and Damian loosened the white-knuckled grip he hadn’t realized he’d had on his katana to pass fingers in front of the man’s face, felt cool breath on them and watched eyelids flicker as the man’s gaze tracked them.

“Yes, Grandfather,” Damian said, and then he jerked his sword free of the man, and watched blood darken clothing which had already been torn to shreds. He could see where it had been padded and reinforced with armor, once upon a time.

Ra’s made a low, contemplative noise, and then flicked his fingers dismissively at them all. “You may have him, then, Damian. Consider it a gift for your ever-growing menagerie.”

A burst of hot embarrassment bloomed in Damian’s guts, but he managed to bow properly to his grandfather without blushing or otherwise giving the emotion away, and he turned back to the silent, staring, dead man and took hold of him by the elbow. “Come,” he said with all of the authority of his position.

It took a firm tug and the man stumbling before he followed, though, and the lack of respect for his inherited authority had Damian’s shoulders drawing tight with tension.

***

Damian’s suite of rooms were lushly appointed; warm and comfortable with piles of carpets and an enormous bed hidden behind a half-wall. His weapons were mounted carefully on pegs on every wall, and he had a window seat with hand-embroidered silk cushions on it so that he can take advantage of the southerly view. At this hour, a fireplace with glowing coals provided the only light, and Damian shut the door behind them, throwing the bolt closed, before going over to tend to it.

When he’d gotten it fed and burning brightly, he turned back to the man, who hadn’t moved from the doorway, and looked him over once again.

The man was shorter than him. His hair though, was dark enough and his eyes, glinting blue or grey or green in reflected firelight, might be light enough for them to pass as siblings, Damian thought.

He had no siblings, though, he knew: his mother had died before she could give him any and his father had died alone and childless in a maze at the hands of _this man’s_ comrades.

Even if he’d _had_ siblings, this person would not be one, he thought; he had, after all, been among those guilty of murdering Ra’s’s great rival.

Damian took his elbow again and guided him toward the fire, pushing him down onto the cushions there. He still bled from the fatal wounds Damian had dealt him, though sluggishly. Damian wanted, to strip him naked and watch him heal, or mend him as he had the rest of his menagerie.

The desire, though, was silly; the wanting and weakness of a child.

Sultana, a snow leopard with a distinct limp and a missing eye, slinked out of nowhere and came over to rub her scent glands against Damian’s cheek, to sniff warily at the stranger and then bare her teeth at him.

Damian soothed her with a hand over her head, and she pressed into his touch. “He’s to be your new companion,” he told her. She didn’t react to that, but she didn’t growl at the stranger, or bite him either, and he thought that might be as well as could be expected.

It was a shame, of course, because she was the least wary of his pets, and he didn’t wish to make them uncomfortable, though he knew his grandfather would not allow him to send this man away, and Damian would never defy the will of Ra’s al Ghul.

“Tell me your name,” Damian ordered, dragging the snow leopard into his lap and scratching behind her ears.

“Talon,” the man replied. Damian nodded, and Sultana growled a little and butted into his chest.

“It isn’t your suppertime yet,” he told her, shifting her off of him and ignoring the way her jaw closed around his wrist. It was a threat, but a gentle one, and Sultana was clever enough to know that to hurt him would be to endanger her own existence.

The rescued ibix was not nearly so gentle.

“I think that the first step will be bathing you,” Damian said, eying the man-- Talon-- critically.

Talon watched him back, but his expression remained unreadable. Sultana shifted to wash her tail, and Talon’s eyes flicked to her, then back to Damian.

“Take off your clothes,” Damian ordered, and Talon shivered and shook his head.

Damian growled, sending Sultana surging forward, teeth bared and growling too. Talon reacted immediately, snarling back and surging up to fight Damian.

And why wouldn’t he? Damian thought, even as he flipped the man and seized him in a headlock. He’d already proven himself immune to Damian’s attacks, and Sultana was hardly any threat.

His dagger tore through Talon’s clothes, and Talon stopped fighting him again, letting Damian roll him and remove the filthy rags. That done, Damian settled back on his heels, gazing at him.

“Your training was harsher than the League’s,” he said, admiring the twist and curve of Talon’s muscular frame, the scars and lines on his body, the closing wounds Damian had inflicted.

The oldest scars of all were burns, the telltale waxy look of the skin underneath some of the worst of the scars making Damian want to flinch away.

He forced himself to remain objective, to stare at him, to wonder, clinically, if the ‘Court of Owls’ that had killed his Grandfather’s great rival had initiation by fire as a rule.

Talon stared back at him and didn’t respond, so Damian stood up and pulled the Talon with him, guiding him past the heavy hanging tapestry that separated off his bathing room, to the heated pool that lapped within, fed by a spring that had been sent up through the mountain centuries before for some favored heir or lover of his Grandfather’s during the height of his power.

Talon paced around the outside of the pool, his wary gait reminiscent of Sultana’s, and then he bent and dipped a hand in the water, and his face changed, his posture shifted, and he slipped into the pool.

Damian didn’t think he could trust Talon to know how to bathe properly, not with the filth coming off his skin from hot water alone, clouding the pool before the pressure of the spring sent the fouled water away and replaces it with clean.

Talon locked eyes with Damian, and Damian held his gaze as he bent to move the basket with his soap and his oils and other personal items nearer the edge. When Talon didn’t move to actually clean himself, Damian sighed and shed his own clothes, and, to Sultana’s obvious distress, stepped into the pool with him.

Talon’s eyes raked down his body and then back up, and he said, “You’re special,” in a strange, flat tone that echoed hollowly with all the water.

Damian rolled his shoulders and grabbed a cake of soap to lather in his hands.

“I am Damian al Ghul, grandson to Ra’s al Ghul and Heir to the Demon,” he replied, because it was true; he _was_ special. And then again, wasn’t, really.

Ra’s had named many Heir, and never yet died. The title was ceremonial, more pain than honor, and some days--

“You learned quickly,” Talon said. “You learned--”

His fingers trailed along Damian’s collarbone, unscarred and strangely sensitive to the touch in a way that was completely unfamiliar. Damian seized Talon’s wrist and twisted it away, pressing his fingers to the bone. 

“I had advantages,” Damian said. He didn’t tell Talon not to touch him, though he should have; he was the Heir, he was inviolate. “Come here,” he added, using the grip on the wrist to drag him closer and carefully running the soap lather along Talon’s collarbone, mirroring the earlier touch.

Talon leaned into the touch, and Damian let him, thinking him very like Sultana in this, and he smiled when Talon’s eyes slid closed til they were mere slits, glittering in candlelight.

“Here,” Damian said, once he’d worked the lather off of his hands and into Talon’s skin. “You wash, and I’ll start with your hair.”

Talon took the cake of soap from him with a wary sort of look, but he mimicked Damian’s actions from earlier, rubbing it into a lather, and then he started to work the soap into the rest of his filthy skin, not flinching when it got into the nearly-healed wounds on his chest, though Damian thought it must surely smart.

But then, he had not flinched in receiving them, so why should he do so now?

Damian took some oil and worked it into his hands before starting to run his fingers through Talon’s hair.

When he’d found the first of his pets, he’d shaved away the matted fur; by now, though, he knew the trick of cleaning it and untangling it, and human hair wasn’t all that different from, say, Sultana’s, so he worked the oil into the strands with his fingers and carefully started to separate them, working his way from the ends up.

His hands were quickly covered in rust-colored oil from whatever had been in his hair, and once Damian had gotten the loose ends untangled to the nape of Talon’s neck, he shifted them both.

“You need to dunk your head,” Damian said, carefully pulling himself up to perch at the lip of the pool, his legs dangling into the water.

Talon shivered, and Damian thought for a moment he’d have to dunk him forcefully, but then, silently, Talon sank beneath the surface.

When he didn’t resurface, Damian had to drag him back up. “Do you not require air?” Damian’s voice sounded harsh.

Talon didn’t reply, and Damian scowled at the back of his head, before taking a fresh cake of soap and lathering it, to tackle the rest of Talon’s hair.

Once Talon was clean, Damian dressed him in his own clothes, which highlighted the differences between them.

He was shorter and leaner, and his scars diminished him further, where they had healed with thick ropes of raised keratin and… disfigured, Damian thought, was not the right word for him.

He was as beautiful as Sultana, with the grace hidden under her missing eye and injuries. He was like an incomplete portrait, the sort of thing that Damian had had to hide away after his mother’s death, because such useless hobbies were beneath the Demon’s Heir.

He had tried, once upon a time, to hide the animals he took in, too, but Ra’s had known and had made him slaughter one of them in the throne room. His first, actually: a goat who had been wholly dependent upon him had died gently butting his face and bleating happily while Damian’s knife slit its throat.

And then Ra’s had, in his beneficence, moved him into _this_ suite, with the attached greenhouse and it’s thick glass-paned roof, and brought him a wolf cub too young to be away from its mother, and Damian had understood:

Nothing was done outside of the will of Ra’s, but Grandfather’s kindness was bountiful.

He had _understood_.

Damian looked Talon over and wonder whether he would be required to kill _him_ too, and shivered, and reminded himself that it did not matter.

“You will sleep there,” Damian said, pointing to the cot that was tucked into the corner closest to the door, the place a bodyguard would have slept if Damian had trusted anyone with his life but himself, and Talon looked at it, then at him.

“Why?” Talon asked, and Damian was caught, held by a gaze he had decided was the exact color of the noonday sky.

“Grandfather gave you to me,” Damian said.

“And you wish me to be… active always?”

“No,” Damian replied, grabbing Talon’s elbow and dragging him over to the bed. “This is where you sleep. Where you are... inactive.”

“But, what if I become active when you do not need me?”

Damian stared. “Then you make yourself useful. Tend the fire. Feed the animals.” He gestured vaguely at the door between his bedroom and the greenhouse. “Don’t go near the ibix,” he added.

A servant rapped at the door, signalling that he would be required at dinner, and Damian took one last look at the Talon, now clean and clad in proper clothing, staring at him with blank blue eyes. “I will send someone with food for you,” he said. “There are books on my desk, you may read if you grow bored. Sultana will see to guarding you: don’t try to escape.”

Talon didn’t reply, and Damian didn’t have time to deal with him the way he thought he might need to, so he shut the door behind him and locked it, pocketing the key.

***

Dick looked around the room once the other-- Damian al Ghul-- had shut the door and then back at the bed he’d been taken to. It had blankets, but there was no way to shut it up, and when he inspected it, it had none of the mechanics for cooling that the caskets in the Court had had, and he turned around in a full circle, examining the room for that secret.

He had failed in his mission, and his Court had been defeated, and he alone had been carried off to this new Court, and so far, none of it made any sense.

He had thought, in the room before, with the new Court, that the boy might be Talon too, with his sharp sword and his deadly liquid movement. Even though the fight had been brief, it had been altogether too much like fighting another Talon, and he hadn’t liked it. Liked it even less than the squirming sick sensation that followed the pain of a wound, and so he’d focused on the boy, had followed where dictated, and…

And nothing.

There was nothing but clothing in the chest at the foot of the larger bed, though there were swords set into a cabinet along the far wall, pristinely kept and gleaming with oil and care.

The bathroom was empty except for a toilet in a secret alcove and that hot spring pool Damian al Ghul had forced him into, and when he touched the far door, the one Damian al Ghul had pointed at and said ‘animals’, it opened linto a jungle.

The big cat-- and Dick didn’t know the right word for her, spotted like a cheetah, but white and low and slinking-- followed close at his side as Damian al Ghul had said, and once he was through the door and had let his fingers brush briefly, rebelliously through the thick fur of her ruff, he realized that this was not a jungle, for all of the plants were in trays set up off a stone floor, even though faint evening light filtered in through the ceiling through windows as long across as a man and the air was humid and warm and wonderful.

Dick examined it carefully; with no one to see his self-indulgence, he touched the blossoms of flowers and listened to the calls of birds. He saw the low canine form of a dog or a wolf watching him through yellow eyes down another row, and in another row was a peacock whose tail was lopsided and head was bent.

There was a grotto clearing at the far end of the room, with a small waterfall tumbling over artfully arrayed rocks, and he could see a snake at the top on the driest of the rocks, and a … mountain goat? he thought maybe, drinking near the shallows.

Dick sat down, and the white cheetah laid down next to him and watched him with her hazel eyes, which was an improvement over the snarling and growling from before.

“No blood now,” Dick said, offering her a hand to sniff at. Damian had done so before, to no harm, and she reminded him-- _a flicker of light, the bars of a cage, a mane--_ of something from before.

She ran her tongue over the back of his hand once, and then bit him sharply enough to draw blood before butting her head up against his hand in an unmistakeable bid for a caress, and Dick, wonderingly, complied.

***

“And how is the immortal?” Grandfather asked, directly addressing Damian for the first time since they’d sat to eat at his table.

“He is-- he is not normal,” Damian said. “I had to help him bathe.”

“Well, then he is well suited to your care, Grandson,” Ra’s said, smiling cruelly. “All those pets have prepared you?”

“Of course, Grandfather,” Damian said, not allowing his embarrassment to show, though the rest of the table was smiling with amusement and staring at him like sharks circling blood. “He is remarkable though. The wounds I dealt were all but healed before I left. He will bear studying I think. He is suggestible, if wild.”

“Good.” Ra’s said, and with that, he turned to one of his lieutenants and talk turned to the political workings of some nation Ra’s was trying to destroy from within.

His bodyguard kept her gaze on him though, not the others, and when he finally was dismissed she followed him back to his rooms, and he had to slam the door to keep her out.

Talon looked up from his place by the fire and the array of food he’d been sent on Damian’s orders, staring at him for a few moments and then cocking his head.

“Are you damaged?” he asked politely, and Damian shook his head mutely.

Talon shifted a little, rising to a crouch and still watching him intently. “Is there danger?” he asked, still polite.

Damian, despite himself, laughed, shaking his head even though the answer was always, eternally, yes.

“Did your Court decide to dispose of you?” Talon asked, coming fully to his feet and stalking towards Damian with intent.

It took him a moment to parse that, and when he did, Damian shook his head again. “Not tonight,” he added.

“You fear they might,” Talon said, smirking a little. Perhaps he was pleased to have found some weakness in his jailer, Damian thought. Or he was just completely mad from whatever it was that made him unkillable, and he smirked for no cause. “Have you failed in their tasks?”

“ _Never,”_ Damian snarled in response, and Talon stalked still closer, backing him against the door.

His skin no longer felt fever-hot, but he still smelled, under Damian’s preferred soaps, of metal and death, and Damian shoved him away.

“Sometimes people are disposed of,” Talon said. “And the Court won’t tell you why.”

Damian snorted, but he let Talon grab his arm and pull him over to the food laid out before the fire. He hadn’t eaten much with his grandfather, and he _was_ hungry.

It didn’t matter that Talon was touching him without invitation-- the Heir might be inviolate, but Talon had been given to _Damian_.

***

The week passed, and the scars faded from Talon’s skin, paling from grotesque purple lines stitching his skin together into more healthy looking things, older and less distracting.

He drilled alone in Damian’s quarters, but he always put the weapons back, made his existence as non-intrusive as possible, and it felt strange. None of the animals had accommodated Damian; they’d simply existed in shared space with him.

Talon, he knew, was not an animal, despite his wildness, and his existence unsettled Damian.

Ra’s never again asked for an update on Talon, and that infuriated Damian, deep in the parts of him that feared his grandfather, so one morning he rolled out of bed and told Talon, who was already awake: “I’ve decided to appoint you my bodyguard.”

Talon nodded, and then he frowned. “You aren’t a Talon, are you?”

Damian turned that over, puzzling through the question and the little bits he’d managed to figure out about Talon’s Court of Owls, and he shook his head a little. “I am,” he replied. “But it pleases my Lord Ra’s to pretend I am a member of his Court.”

“You’re special,” Talon said, repeating his assessment from that first night, and Damian shrugged.

He armed himself without waiting for Damian’s permission, and Damian wondered if that should worry him, before deciding it did not., and tThen he followed Damian out of his quarters, a step behind him but keeping pace, and Damian liked that he would not have to train this one.

They stood through his grandfather’s court like that, and whenever he turned to check on him, he was shoulder to shoulder with Ra’s’s bodyguard, eyes alert and hand poised to draw steel.

Damian sucked in a breath, and Ra’s ordered a man’s death, and Damian exhaled as he went to play executioner again.

***

Being bodyguard to a member of the strange Court seemed like too much of an honor to Dick, and he didn’t quite understand why he’d been given it when so many others who had never been brought before the Court in chains, who had been this Court’s enemy before being made their pet, but it wasn’t an honor he would take lightly.

The other bodyguard, Ra’s’s bodyguard, was much better at her duties than he was; she had taken better to her training, he suspected, was not defective like Dick was.

When he had asked her her name, she had not even looked at him, and Dick had felt sick and jealous of her composure, had wanted to throw her to the floor and spill her blood.

However, she was not attacking Damian, and he did not wish to earn punishment; not when he still didn’t know what punishment might entail.

Sometimes she’d watch him, and he didn’t like the way her eyes felt against his skin, assessing, knowing, terrifying, but he wasn’t attacking Ra’s, so he doubted she would spill _his_ blood.

It was difficult to sleep, the room too-warm and not dark enough, nothing like the coffins he and his brother Talons had been stored in, and he wasn’t certain whether he liked it, but he definitely didn’t _dislike_ it, and he had dreams, at night, of being shut in, of drowning in metal and water.

Those dreams were fine, though, because they were easy to sleep through.

Sometimes, he dreamed of _fire_.

When that dream came, it drove him out of the bed Damian al Ghul had given him and across the room, to the corner farthest from the smoldering coals in the fireplace.

He pressed back against the cold stone wall and the stones shifted under his touch, startling him from his irrational fear: fire couldn’t harm him any more than anything else could, and he abruptly remembered that.

The stone fell free from the wall when Dick moved to investigate it, but he managed to catch it before it clattered to the stone floor and woke up Damian.

When he went to put it back into the wall, he saw a round scroll case and couldn’t resist the temptation of pulling it out.

There was a sheaf of papers inside, and Dick was already in for it, so there was no reason _not_ to unroll them, and once he saw the top page, he froze, his breath stuttering to a sharp halt in his chest that hurt worse than a knife.

The woman in the picture was beautiful, and her features were soft and sharp in ways that reminded him of Damian, and he wondered who she was meant to be.

He reluctantly laid the top page aside and looked at the charcoal rendering of the Sultana, and he smiled at the glint of her teeth. The drawing was _good_ , he thought, and as he flipped through more of the pages, he realized both that Damian must have drawn them and that Damian was…

Not.

He was _not_ Court, even though he was very very good at pretending to be, and that was _dangerous_. He remembered young adults in his Court, the way they’d slip up, just a very little-- the wrong kind of praise at the wrong time, a murmured disagreement in the wrong company, and he remembered how they would be disposed of.

He’d asked, that first night, but he hadn’t known then that… he’d _mind_.

Of course he would mind: he was Damian’s bodyguard, a position that had apparently been in great demand and bore as much honor as Dick had thought, and if they successfully disposed of him, Dick would have failed in that task.

“What are you doing?” Damian demanded in strident tones, stalking over to the corner of the room from his bed, to all appearances completely awake and all anger.

Dick knew he wasn’t imagining the fear though, the wideness of Damian’s eyes, the rushed heaving of his chest.

“Looking,” Dick replied, offering the papers to Damian.

Damian snatched them from him and closed the distance to the fireplace in three strides, and by the time Dick realized what he was doing, the pages had already caught.

He closed the distance between them just in time to watch the woman’s beautiful face char and curl away into ash, and then Damian rounded on him, punching him solidly in the throat and surprising Dick into retreat.

“Don’t _snoop_ ,” Damian snarled. “This is _my_ room, not yours. You’re _nothing._ I’m the Heir, I’m-- you’re _nothing_ , and you won’t look through my things ever again.”

Dick nodded, trying to breathe past a crushed trachea and wondering how long it would take for that to heal. He didn’t like the slow feeling of suffocation it brought any more than he’d liked watching the woman’s face burn to ash.

“You can’t…” Damian said, but he looked lost now, and the fear had overcome the anger.

“It was an accident,” Dick rasped, and Damian glared at him. “I wouldn’t have found it if I’d been looking.”

It was meant to be reassuring, but it helped that it was true. The place where the stones were loose was at about knee-height: higher than a man would look if he was checking the floor, lower than anyone might casually notice.

Damian shook his head, and then he snapped, “Get me the rest of it.”

Dick went back to the wall and the loose stone, and he reached in and found more scroll cases, and a leather satchel that must have had other precious things within.

Damian’s eyes glittered in the firelight as he tossed the rest of it in.

“You--”

“If a walking _automaton_ can find them, anyone could,” Damian interrupted.

“I am _not_!” Dick snarled, immediately regretting it when Damian lashed out again, slamming him to the floor hard enough the he could _feel_ his skull crack against stone.

“You’re _nothing_ ,” Damian snarled. “Ra’s al Ghul cannot even _kill_ you. You won’t even _die_ properly.”

“I am _not!”_ Dick repeated. “I’m-- I am _Talon_ , I belong to the Court.”

“And what does that mean?” Damian demanded, drawing his knife and dragging it down Dick’s bare chest hard enough that the blood seeped out in a rush. “The Court is _dead_. They didn’t even match us kill for kill. They _failed_ and you’re all that’s left. You. Are. Nothing.”

Dick hooked his leg around Damian and flipped them, cushioning his skull with his hand because Damian’s cuts didn’t close the way a Talon’s would and Dick was still his bodyguard.

“I am... “ he stopped and felt the wounds Damian had cut into his chest knitting closed, and he wanted… he wanted them to stay open. He wanted to bleed onto Damian until there was no blood left in his body and he had nothing left.

Damian was right-- he _was_ nothing. Dick’s fists clenched on air and he snarled. “And what are you? You’re stronger even than I am, and I was the best of the Court’s Talons. But you let him stand there and threaten you with every breath. You burn every secret you’ve ever had because you’re _afraid._ He’s an old man, and the Court would bow to you.”

Damian snarled and planted his hands in Dick’s chest but didn’t push him.

“You killed Bruce Wayne,” Damian said, and Dick tilted his head and pulled carefully back, just enough that Damian’s hands dropped down.

“I did,” he said. “He was dying already, though.”

Damian nodded. “I know. I-- You killed him, and I have killed you twice over.”

“Three times, I think,” Dick offered, reaching back to check that his skull had healed shut.

“But I will never kill _him_.”

Dick tried to figure out what Damian _meant_ , as it seemed critically important, but he couldn’t push through to the question that would net him the right answers.

“No,” Dick replied. “He’s not like us.”

Damian closed his eyes. “He’s my father.”

The word brought an odd flash of association, of dark hair and a smile and then _fire_ , again, and Dick thought he must have forgotten those things.

His name was not Talon.

“You should go back to sleep,” he told Damian, half-hoping Damian would argue, would stab him again, but to his surprise, Damian simply sat up, and Dick was taller than him like this, straddling his hips.

Damian pushed him off.

Once they were settled back into their beds and Dick couldn’t close his eyes still because of the dreams of fire, he whispered into the darkness between them: “ _Sorry_.”

He wanted to be surprised that Damian replied, “I should have burned them years ago,” but he couldn’t be.


End file.
